Rice: Old Middle East 'not so great'

Washington Post

Published
6:30 am CST, Wednesday, December 20, 2006

WASHINGTON — What many Americans may see as chaos and turmoil in the Middle East is partly the result of the Bush administration hastening historical forces that were destined to reshape the region, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday.

"The old Middle East was not going to stay," Rice said in an interview. "Let's stop moaning the old Middle East. It was not so great, and it was not going to survive anyway."

She argued that American policymakers had long tolerated bad outcomes in the Middle East for the sake of stability, including allowing former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to gas the Kurds, permitting the Syrian occupation of Lebanon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat "stealing the Palestinian people blind" and cavorting with terrorism.

"But that Middle East was going to break down; it had to break down," she said. "You weren't going to continue to suppress all of these negative trends, and so one way or another it was going to come apart."